If you are a UK resident, you may sign the petition to take down "Safety act" that in its current form will cut the country from tens of thousands of websites:

• Any interactive website has to make ID system to verify age (either a huge upfront investment to make one or ~$1.5 per visitor from commercial solutions).
• The legal relief budget government expects is way over the whole monthly budget for the majority of websites.
• There are huge fines and other legal actions against website owners.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903
#Legal@GameDEV

Holy crap: thanks to Collective Shout, Steam lost PayPal support in many regions!

If you forgot the story: 8 Aussie and radical Catholic mums attacked Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal so they will stop selling any adult games or games they generally don't like. Under false accusations they tried to make it look like those games are illegal (but they don't). They even tried to delist Detroit Become Human only because one of them didn't like the game.

And they partially succeeded with tens of thousands of games got delisted from Steam, Itchio and GOG.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZVJGtvY1js
#Steam@GameDEV
#Valve@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

And yeah, don't forget they made this shit in The UK and now rejecting the official petition where 500 000+ people were against it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCIo1IyykLQ
#Legal@GameDEV

Tencent spent years, negotiating the possible Horizons Online. Sony clearly said no, but Tencent already wasted millions on the production and announced it as Light of Motiram.

Now, after several months in court, the game is officially delisted and the case is settled. But they will not tell us how exactly.

#PlayStation@GameDEV
#Tencent@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Oh no, GOG updated their policies, we are doomed! (no, they are simply keeping us on track with ownership changes and some policies changes due to laws or structure)

#GOG@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

The company named Unity just divided its users again...

#Unity@GameDEV
#GameAssets@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Have you noticed how many legal actions against Valve are in the works right now? I assume, Gabe found something they don't want the world to know...

#Valve@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Fun fact:

Quick refunds were allowed by Valve only in 2015 after Australian government sued them for lack of refunds. Valve initially stated that they are not in Australia and it will not be a problem, then lost the case, got a fine and new refunds policy that... made them times more popular.

Then Europe joined in and sued them over for regionally locked games based on the original purchase location. And they gave up on it as well. Which made Steam even more popular.

So, Valve wasn't that democratic just a few years ago, they got to this spot by accident.

#Valve@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Steam seemingly tired of sneaky malware and working with FBI to do some counter-measures.

#Steam@GameDEV
#Malware@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Krafton lost the case against Subnautica 2 director and ex-CEO Ted Gill. The court orders the publisher to re-establish roles of the founders and give Ted full control over the Unknown Worlds studio and the game.

The case was rather confusing from both sides, but the judge sided with the CEO as his arguments were more consistent and reliable. The seizure of the company and termination of rights and roles of founders were done without legal grounds.

The case is not over though, they will have to settle next steps and compensations. But even now the judge extended the term for the game to earn the required sum for founders to get bonuses.

#Krafton@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

YouTube is getting worse and worse

- They can detect 3 seconds of music
- They can't detect scammers in his comments
- So, let's remove 13.8m subs channel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXO1RMn8qBs
#YouTube@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV
#Music@GameDEV

After their parent company Nacon admited they are out of money, their subordinates followed with the same legal request.

Paris-based studio Spiders is perhaps best known for working on the Greedfall franchise. Kylotonn has spent recent years overseeing the World Rally Championship series, while Cyanide has worked on franchises such as Styx and Blood Bowl (via).

#Nacon@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Did it happen? 😧
(by Matt Margolis)

#meme@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

And Nintendo's controversial patent is no longer valid. They have some time to appeal but I assume they will not get it anyway.

For context: they are not the authors of the idea, the gameplay feature has been used before them. This case is so bad that it caused changes in the patent office itself.

#Legal@GameDEV
#Nintendo@GameDEV

Italian TV channel La7 does it all the time and YouTube (at least before) gave zero fucks: they use videos made by other people (and downloaded by La7 from YouTube without consent), then upload them to copyright system and strike EVERYONE. This time it was NVIDIA.

#NVIDIA@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV
#YouTube@GameDEV

A Japanese crowdfunding platform sent less than a half of the money to the game developer. So he's suing them over it while they pretend "the money were accidentally wired to a wrong client". Then failed to prove it.

#Legal@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV